Listing dangerously

John: Mearsheimer, the new darling of the We Don’t Hate Jews, We Hate Zionists Society of Jew Haters,: explains his Selekzion process and proves he’s not a Nazi. : Unlike them, he says there: are some Good Jews:

American Jews who care deeply about Israel can be divided into three broad categories.: The first two are what I call “righteous Jews” and the “new Afrikaners,” which are clearly definable groups that think about Israel and where it is headed in fundamentally different ways. : The third and largest group is . . . the “great ambivalent middle.”. . .

To give you a better sense of what I mean when I use the term righteous Jews, let me give you some names of people and organizations that I would put in this category. The list would include Noam Chomsky, Roger Cohen, Richard Falk, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt, Tony Karon, Naomi Klein, MJ Rosenberg, Sara Roy, and Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss fame, just to name a few. I would also include many of the individuals associated with J Street and everyone associated with Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as distinguished international figures such as Judge Richard Goldstone. Furthermore, I would apply the label to the many American Jews who work for different human rights organizations, such as Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch.

On the other side we have the new Afrikaners, who will support Israel even if it is an apartheid state. . . . The new Afrikaners will of course try to come up with clever arguments to convince themselves and others that Israel is really not an apartheid state, and that those who say it is are anti-Semites.

It’s that “cleverness” you have to watch out for. : Those “Afrikaner Jews.” : Those Nazi Jews. : Huh. : ”And they call me a Nazi!”

It’s almost quaint to note Mearsheimer’s: protestation back in 2006: “I don’t have an agenda in the sense of viewing myself as: proselytizing or trying to sell this,” Mearsheimer told the: Forward. : ”I: am a scholar, not an activist, and I am reticent to take questions from: the media because I do believe that this is a subject that has to be approached very carefully.”

Maybe the tip-off about the quality of this “scholar” was his use of the word “reticent” for “reluctant”? Then again, that could have been the: Forward’s error.

The fact is, he’s almost certainly been sucked up into a world he never made—the love-fest available to anyone “legit” who can cloak antisemitism as principled opposition to the State of Israel (yes, I acknowledge the difference, and there certainly is one). He probably didn’t intend to play this role, but becoming a celebrity, well, it must be very pleasant for a previously obscure area studies professor, no?